


Or Forever Hold Your Peace

by pessimisticvirtuoso



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: And YES Ford knows the flower langauge!!!, Closure, Don’t copy to another site, Ford is excellent at bottling up his emotions wowow, I bet you wont fight him tho, Kinda?, TW for mentions of child abuse, Technically Stangst?, Yes I looked up flower language for this, fight me, he'll kick your ass, nothing too graphic i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pessimisticvirtuoso/pseuds/pessimisticvirtuoso
Summary: They planned to set sail- they've bought a boat, stocked up on supplies, and tied up any remaining loose ends in Gravity Falls.They've just got one more stop to make before they leave- Glass Shard, New Jersey.TW: Mention of child abuse





	Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Stanley and Stanford had been through a lot together as children, then teenagers, then as old men, each with their own story to tell and decades of time to make up for. If they were to look back upon everything they've experienced, then they'd be sure that the last two months had more than settled the debt in terms of danger- but not for the sheer thrill of adventure. 

Their plans had been carefully thought out, budgeted, and then finalized- and now, two weeks before they were due to leave and fulfill their childhood dreams, they took a trip to the place where it all began.

Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, was different than the twins remembered. Neither of them were all that surprised- that's what the passage of time does, after all. The boardwalk was shockingly similar to the way it was in the sixties- the only difference, it seemed, was the stores located there. Only a handful of places from their childhood still stood, like Daffy's Taffy and Buster's Construction. What really marked the change, however, was their father's old pawn shop- it was boarded over and derelict, as if nobody had wanted to rent the building out after the place closed.

Neither of them could find fault in that. Nobody in their right mind would want to own a place after Filbrick, especially if they knew the kind of man that he was. Cold, stubborn as a mule, and as immovable as a brick wall. He had a natural tendency to act first, think later- especially in a bout of anger, which he was terribly prone to. Stan and Ford found this out the hard way as children.

Their eyes lingered just a moment longer on the rundown building before they continued on their way. As they weaved through the crowd, a thought occurred to Ford. He spared a glance back at his brother, making sure he was following him, before addressing his idea.

"Do you think we should visit them?" Stan's face shifted from neutral to a bit confused.

"Visit who?"

"Our parents. I'm assuming you know where they're buried," he said. He hoped that Stan knew because he certainly didn't. He wasn't exactly in town for the funerals.

"Yeah, they're in the local cemetery, I'm pretty sure, but-"

He cut off in mild surprise when Ford gripped his wrist and ducked into a store. It didn't take long to figure out that he had gone into a joke shop- one of his personal favorites as a child. It was under new management, of course, but the place seemed very similar to how he remembered it. It brought a warm wave of nostalgia for the days he knew he would never get back.

"Did you ever visit them at all?" Ford's voice wasn't hard, per se, but it definitely had an odd edge to it. Stan felt a spark of indignation at his tone, and his voice may or may not have had a tinge of bitterness when he replied.

"Why would I? I wasn't welcome back in the family until I made the millions that I cost them. They'd roll over in their graves if I did- or at least, Pa would have."

Ford's demeanor softened and his eyes lost their firmness as the validity of the statement hit him. He laid a hand on his brother's shoulder, and his voice was noticeably gentler when Stan heard it again.

"I think we should visit them, at least just this once. It'll give us both a bit of closure that we may have not realized we needed."

Stan couldn't find anything wrong with that statement, but the idea of seeing his parent's graves was just unsettling. He couldn't quite place it, but he was fairly sure it was due to what happened as a teenager. Other than the widespread discomfort that came with that, he couldn't see an arguable reason not to. Ford seemed to want to go anyway, and Stan's already cost him so many opportunities and chances in his life- why would he deny him this as well?

"Yeah, okay," he said, his tone forcibly casual, "let's go." Ford seemed relieved that Stan was agreeing to go, and the younger brother not-so-gently squashed down any discomfort he had in favor of doing what his brother wanted for a change, instead of the other way around.

"I'm going to get Ma some flowers. I don't know if anybody ever put some out for her," he said, and Stan felt a stab of guilt. Pa had always treated him harshly, but Ma always seemed to be the gentler of his two parents. She would tell them stories at night and dedicated as much time as she could to her two boys. The number one main thing that Stan would always remember about her was that she loved them equally. She didn't play favorites with her children like her husband and their teachers did. She had loved him just as much as she had loved Ford, and that made the stake of guilt drive deeper into his chest.

He followed Ford as they left the shop and went down the street to a flower shop that he definitely didn't remember being there. The scent inside reminded him of the perfume his mother used to wear, yet it was so strong it nearly made him gag. He'd never been an enormous fan of flowers- they looked nice, sure, but they'll just die unless you can plant them properly and they smell weird as well. 

He watched as Ford walked around the store, eyes quickly scanning the variety of flowers available. It took him only a minute, but it seemed like Stan blinked and Ford was paying for a custom arrangement. A few minutes later, minutes spent staring off into space and thinking, Ford was heading towards him with a small bouquet of blossoms in his hand. 

He didn't know much about flowers, but he thought the bundle in his brother's grasp looked nice enough. It was a light arrangement of blue, pink, and white. It didn't seem extraordinary or anything, which he supposed was for the best- while their mother wasn't very understated as a person, he didn't think that bold, brightly colored flowers would belong on a grave. Then again, what did he know?

"Which ones did you get?"

Ford smiled, feeling a little shy. "It's a bouquet of peace lilies, pink carnations, white orchids, and blue hyacinth. They're... symbolic," he said, "I thought they'd fit the situation."

Stan hummed in acknowledgment and followed Ford when he left the shop. From this section of the boardwalk, their feet knew where to take them. They eventually broke off from the Saturday morning crowd, heading off down a side-street. People walked this path as well, but not nearly as many. The twins walked in silence, both allowing their feet to take them to a place that they had passed countless times as children.

The cemetery was never something that they paid much attention to. It was tucked away in a corner, away from much of the usual traffic that Glass Shard got in the summer. It wasn't very common for someone to be found visiting one of their loved ones here- most of the people buried in Glass Shard didn't have any family remaining in the city. 

It took a little while to remember where the Pines family lot resided in the cemetery since neither of them had been in the town since they left. Right next to a pair of graves marked 'Claudia April Pines' and 'Harold Asher Pines' was a new set of tombstones. They were done in the standard grey stone and held no remarkable qualities. 

The inscriptions read 'Filbrick Elmer Pines, 1921-1988' and 'Caryn Romanoff Pines, 1924-1995'.

They stood there in silence for a moment, then two. Ford hesitantly stepped onto the lot, gravel crunching under his feet, before gently resting the bundle of flowers at the tombstone of their mother. He paused upon righting himself, his eyes flickering over to Filbrick's tombstone. With Ford's back turned to him, Stanley missed the flash of anger in his eyes. His twin turned back around and walked back off of the gravel, coming to stand beside his brother again. 

"It's nice to see her again, even if its... like this," Stan said, gesturing to Caryn's tombstone. Ford nodded. He didn't dare ask about the stone beside it. He stayed silent, and after a moment his brother continued- though it wasn't he who was addressed.

"I should've put aside some time to make this trip earlier. Maybe back when I still could've talked to you in person," he said, his voice subdued. Stan's brown eyes were locked onto their mother's grave, and he was quieter when he continued. "I don't say it out loud much, Ma, but thank you- for loving us both equally." 

He didn't say anything for a few long moments. His eyes zeroed in on the leftmost stone, and he stared at it. Ford couldn't read the emotion in his eyes, providing that there was some to be found in them. 

"Y'know, Pa, at least you were right about boxing lessons. They did me some good." 

The silence returned, and Ford took the opportunity to address their mother himself. He was uncertain of what to say in circumstances like these. He and Stanley were only children when their grandparents passed. They weren't expected to speak to them like this. 

"We got you flowers," he said, voice a little awkward, "most of them mean something but I also remembered that peace lilies were your favorite, so.." 

He trailed off. For a moment, he was completely at a loss for what to say.

"I miss you," he settled on. "I'm sorry that we didn't part on the best of terms. Thank you for taking care of Stanley, even if you thought it was me all along. Knowing you, though, you probably knew. You always knew what was going on." 

That sentence left him with a melancholic smile. He stood, his head angled downward and his hands clasped behind his back. Ford was trying to ignore the spark of resentment that rushed through him at the sight of their father's grave, for Stanley's sake. 

Despite his brother's agreement to come, he still felt like this must be extremely difficult for him to bear. One parent tried to keep in contact with him after he was thrown out, and ultimately failed, and the other threw him out. The reminders of their early life paired with the fact that he was here with the brother that ignored him for a decade afterward didn't convince Ford that his twin was having a good time. Stanley cleared his throat.

"I'm gonna go take a walk. Meet me at the pier whenever you're done. No rush," he said, a touch _too_ casually, before he turned and began to amble away. Ford wanted to say something, anything, but he knew his brother better than anybody else on the planet- he knew when he needed some space to sort out his thoughts and feelings. This was one of those times, and he dared not intrude on his brother's privacy. 

He watched his brother's figure grow smaller and smaller before he turned a corner and left his field of vision. A hollow pit grew in the bottom of his stomach, knowing that his brother was upset and that there wasn't much he could really do. 

It was just him and the graves now. He stood tall at the end of the plot that marked his father's final resting place. The helplessness that had begun to fester in him boiled, hot and vicious, transforming into white-hot anger in the span of three seconds. With no warning at all, he spat on the ground before him.

"You selfish son of a bitch." The words left his mouth harshly, no pretense to be found. This was pure resentment, bottled up for years on end. Every time he saw the bruises left on his brother when he got back from a 'lecture', every muffled insult he heard through the paper-thin walls, every time he had to pretend to not see the tears stream down his brother's face or hear his soft weeping at night because of the things that their father and other people said to him, it all came rushing back to the front of his mind, registering as unadulterated rage. His blue eyes were like chips of packed ice, staring holes into the engraved stone.

"Stanley was your son. Your _son_ , just as much as I was. You had no right to treat him the way that you did. You called him every negative name under the sun for our entire childhood, up until the day you threw him out for an accident. His self-esteem was so low, it was no wonder at all why he didn't try to make someone of himself back then. He didn't believe that he could do it, and who could blame them if they knew what you did?

"My brother is the strongest, most selfless person that I've ever known. Just because you never saw how much potential he had doesn't mean that he never had any. I daresay he had more than I ever did. Perhaps if you decided to take the initiative to sit down and talk things out with your boy instead of beating him all the time, then you would see that."

As a teenager, Ford would have never even dreamed of saying this to his father, dead or alive. That Ford was gentle; that Ford was kind. This Ford had seen countless hells and experienced near as many. He had no capacity for compassion and love, not for the man in the ground before him.

"Stanley and I spent our childhood doing everything we could to gain your approval, and now I can't for the life of me see why. Your opinion of us doesn't matter and it never did. You're a callous, overcritical, belligerent excuse of a father. I can't believe I ever put value in someone like you. You should be embarrassed by your atrocious behavior. 

"Stanley means the world to me and the rest of our _family_ , and I'll do everything in my power to prove it. Someone's got to be there for him, and it sure as hell wasn't you.

"You're an inconsiderate bastard," he said, his voice cool and even. The vitriol left him like a giant's sigh, and he turned away from the gravestone. His footsteps were marked by the crunching of gravel beneath his feet as he walked away. He paused, just long enough to spit one final sentence over his shoulder, then he left the cemetery to find his brother.

"I'm ashamed to be related to you."

**Author's Note:**

> There are several meanings for the flowers I've used here, so I'll just list the meanings I intended for them.
> 
> Pink Carnation- the love of a mother  
> White Orchid- 'I will always love you' (Take it away, Whitney.)  
> Blue Hyacinth- sincerity, in this case, I mean the sincerity to be on Ford's part, not Caryn's  
> Peace Lily- I didn't really intend a meaning, but they usually mean what they're titled after: peace. I really like the idea of Ford remembering his mother's favorite flower and making a point to include them. It's bittersweet.
> 
> -JAMS


End file.
